McScary: McDonald’s New Mascot Scares The Internet

McScary, or Happy as McDonald’s knows him, is the new Happy Meal mascot hitting North America. The smiling anthropomorphized Happy Meal has been a staple of McDonald’s marketing in France since 2009, but he’s just now making it to the U.S. The thing is – North Americans find him to be a little terrifying.

On Monday, McDonald’s announced via Twitter that it was bringing Happy the serial killer Happy Meal to North America to encourage kids to eat healthy. Happy was unveiled alongside the announcement that McDonald’s would start offering Go-Gurt as a side in Happy Meals starting July 4.

As you might imagine, Happy didn’t receive a warm reception. There were many profanity laden responses to the original tweet with people wondering “what the hell” Happy was. Some even decided to “improve” the recently unveiled mascot to bring out its true nature:

Now, McDonald’s is no stranger to botched social media campaigns. In 2012, the restaurant asked for consumers’ #McDStories, but only got stories of disgusting food and impoverished employees in return. It tried something similar a few months later to promote the Shamrock Shake and got a similar response.

After those two incidents, you would think McDonald’s would finally learn, and it did. Over on McDonald’s Twitter account, it’s obvious the company is just rolling with the response Happy has received thus far: